Letter to the editor: Regarding Patsy Stoddard's Article

"He and his partner never rallied against anyone, they lived their lives very quietly. They had a life partnership."

I have lived my personal life and my life with my partner in this way for some time now: quietly, in a way that clearly makes you and other people around me comfortable with my "lifestyle." I tried to "fit in" and cause as little hassle as possible, resigned to the fact that some people around me could be comfortable with the word "partner" or that my family would introduce her as "my friend."

Comfortable. The operative word. Were it not for the passage of this proposition, I would most likely have continued to live in this way.

The vote on Nov. 4 shows me that a majority of people in this liberal state are still not comfortable enough with who I am, let alone the ones who live outside of it, and that my silence does nothing to help that. I have tried to understand, I have been in and out of blogs and commentaries that explain the point of view of proponents of Proposition 8 and they leave me with feelings from disbelief to downright outrage.

The vote, these websites and articles such as yours simply energize me out of complacency and onto the streets. And they motivate me beyond that to wondering how much more I can do in order to stop the silence and generate change.

So Patsy, I thank you and others like you for getting me out of my comfort zone.